Thursday, January 15, 2015

FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND EXPRESSION AND THE FAKERY OF THE FRENCH’, EUROPEANS’ AND AMERICANS’ EXHORTATIONS ON THESE.

…WHY
EVEN ON OSCAR NIGHT NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO WEAR SIMPLY, THE FOUR-LETTER WORD IS
STILL NOT ALLOWED TO BE BROADCAST OR PUBLISHED IN THE MEDIA!

By
Mansor Puteh

I first
visited Paris
in January, 1981 and the second time in June, 2013. I had fond memories of the
city I visited the first time.

Paris has not changed the second time I saw it again recently
with the EiffelTower still standing proudly and can be
seen from all over the city.

The only
start difference that I could see is the sight of the many colored people especially
Arabs and Muslims from African countries that had been colonized by France earlier, who are now there, especially at
the EiffelTower and the train station, Gard du
Nord which was where I had put up in a hotel at.

There are even stores operated by the Arabs, and all of them speak good French
other than Arabic and some English.

So it
must be highly insensitive for the people at Charlie Hebdo not to be aware of
this and act accordingly. France
today is not like it was before when France
still held power forcefully on many countries in Africa and Asia,
which they had to leave one by one.

Charlie
Hebdo may still be clinging onto the memories of Old France and had not
realized that not only France
that had changed but the whole world too.

Maybe
they are aghast at such development and were insisting that they were right in
exerting their Frenchness, whatever that means…creating a tiny enclave within
the confines of their office building.

And not so far away from it are the headquarters of the Charlie Hebdo weekly
satirical magazine, where some action happened on 7 January, 2015.

Isn’t
the attack on Charlie Hebdo another form of ‘Freedom of Speech and Expression’
too?

But the
voice of the majority was drowned because they were not insistent compared to
those who thought they were doing all of France, Europe and America a service
by insisting on having the freedom of speech and expression; because their
constitutions say so.

Unfortunately,
the French, Europeans and Americans are putting what their constitutions say to
the extreme. They did not care about being moderate in dealing with such
matters.

Yet, on
the other front, they demand everybody to practice moderation and not
extremism.

I am
sure the majority of the French, Europeans and Americans did not support total
and unfettered Freedom of Speech and Expression…

The
attacks that had happened in the Arab countries hardly get any coverage in the
media in the west, yet, the ones that had happened in Sydney
in December last year and in Paris
in January this year, got a lot of that.

Arab
lives are cheap; theirs depended on the charity of the provocateurs in Europe
and America
using firearms that are all manufactured in the west.

The dead Arabs and especially Palestinians are ‘collateral damage’.

Charlie
Hebdo thought they were doing the whole of France and the western world a
service by chiding the religious beliefs of others, by habitually coming up
with highly provocative illustrations of characters which many more others hold
dear.

They were hailed as the doyen for the freedom of speech and expression as
enshrined in the French Constitution and very much in the other countries in
Europe and the west and especially America.

But they
did not realize that the acts that they receive at their own end is and can
also be taken to mean that their beliefs can be taken to the other extreme with
them now facing the brunt of their beliefs.

Charlie
Hebdo is now world famous, when in the past or few days earlier they were an
unknown weekly magazine.

But
alas, with their newfound fame, this magazine may not rise again; four of their
cartoonists and their editor had been killed by some unknown men all dressed in
black. They are the true ‘Men in Black’ who are unlike those in an early Hollywood film with this title.

It will
take a while for the French authorities to finally nab the attackers.

But in
the meantime, the debate on the Freedom of speech and expression can be held,
so that whatever comes out of this can serve everybody better, that these
freedoms can be misused and abused.

France has learnt too late and
tragically how such freedoms do not mean anything since it is such a useless
concept.

This is prove that the French mentality and intellectualism as much as those of
their counterparts in Europe and America are of similar levels.

Does the
Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science (AMPAS)
allow anyone they invite for the Oscar Night to dress simply?

No. They have to wear formal clothes with the men in tuxedos and the women in
gowns.

Can
anyone wear shorts to the Oscar Night? No way.

Can
anyone visit the White House wearing pajamas? No way.

Can
anyone in America
spout the four-letter word on television, in film and on the radio as well as
put it in print in newspapers and magazines? No way.

This
proves that there is still some limits that the French and Europeans and
Americans have that does not allow them to fully and entirely uphold their
so-called Freedom of Speech and Expression.

This may
be a misnomer and myth at the same time.

Are Americans allowed to publicly say ‘NEGRO’ or ‘NIGGER’? Do the Americans now
call the Japanese – JAPS! like they liked to do before?

The
cartoonists and editors must have taken the gamble with their lives with some
of them even saying how they would defend ‘freedom of speech and expression’
with their lives.

On 7
January, they became martyrs of their own cause including their editor and some
other staff of their magazine who were all gunned down by some unknown
assailants.